Endoscopes have attained great acceptance within the medical community since they provide a means for performing procedures with minimal patient trauma while enabling the physician to view the internal anatomy of the patient. Over the years, numerous endoscopes have been developed and categorized according to specific applications, such as cystoscopy, colonoscopy, gastroscopy, laparoscopy, upper GI endoscopy and others. Endoscopes may be inserted into the body's natural orifices or through an incision in the skin.
An endoscope is usually an elongated tubular shaft, rigid or flexible, having a video camera or a fiber optic lens assembly at its distal end. The shaft is connected to a handle which sometimes includes an ocular for direct viewing. Viewing is also usually possible via an external screen. Various surgical tools may be inserted through a working channel in the endoscope for performing different surgical procedures.
Endoscopes, such as but not limited to, colonoscopes, gastroscopes, and bronchoscopes, that are currently being used typically have a front camera for viewing the internal organ, such as the colon, an illuminator, a fluid injector for cleaning the camera lens and sometimes also the illuminator, and a working channel for insertion of surgical tools, for example, for removing polyps found in the colon. Often, endoscopes also have fluid injectors (“jet”) for cleaning a body cavity, such as the colon, into which they are inserted. The illuminators commonly used are fiber optics which transmits light, generated remotely, to the endoscope tip section. The use of light-emitting diodes (LEDs) for illumination is also known.
Typically, endoscopes use a fluid channeling component or manifold comprising a drilled-through working channel. Such a machine drilled-through channel is often challenging to create with respect to the required high quality of its internal surface in terms of smoothness. A machine drilled-through channel is also less amenable to seamless directional transition of the channel. Repeated insertion of medical/surgical instruments through the working channel may cause deterioration of the internal surface of the channel due to scratches, dents, nicks and the like. A damaged machine-drilled working channel cannot be replaced or repaired and hence the only recourse in such cases is a replacement of the manifold or of the entire tip section of the endoscope.
There is thus a need in the art for endoscopes, such as but not limited to, colonoscopes, gastroscopes, and bronchoscopes, that provide a working channel tube that is detachably or removably positioned within a manifold to define a working channel. The working channel tube is amenable to being easily replaced, retaining a high quality of its internal surface and having seamless directional change/transitions.